Update!

For those who may be wondering:

The dog is still alive and I am eternally grateful. She even chased a chicken the other day so we are through the worst and all I have to contend with now is the vet bill!

Thank you to everyone who helped me get through it all your words and comfort meant everything to me!

And the reason why I have not been able to write anything sooner

lack of Internet connection - AGAIN!!!!!!!

The Internet I fear is on its last legs and I don’t know whether I will be connected for very long.

The sad saga of the broadband service where I live just seems to get longer and more convoluted with the telling so I will, for your edification keep it short.

And simple.

The village is  roughly 4 miles from the main BT box which serves Stowmarket. The copper wire which extends these four miles has deteriorated so much that the village can only get up to 1Mb at best at its main connection box just outside the pub. I live a further quarter of a mile on and by the time the signal reaches me I can only get half a Mb – the speed of your basic dial up and that not very clearly.

Quite obviously that isn’t acceptable.

So at great expense I went alternative and sourced my Internet connection through the airwaves. At first it was fabulous and I was ecstatic.

But

All good stories have BUT.

But over the years it has got more and more frustrating because I get time outs which means no signal can get through to me. This means my broadband speed gets slower and slower resulting on some days with me getting no signal whatsoever.

I am told it is because of the trees and the fact that they grow. The leaves get int eh way all summer long and in the winter it is the wind and the cold that interferes.

Suffice to say all this means is that my ability to stay connected is being severely tested.

Although there is hope.

Strange things have been going on outside the pub and rumour has it that BT Infinity may be descending on our quiet backwater…

If it does…

WATCH THIS SPACE!!!!!!!!!

When you're waiting....

The music has been turned up.
Loud.
I must not think about anything . Just the stuff I am doing.
I have to do stuff.
I have to keep doing because as soon as I don't, I think. And thinking isn't good at present.
My dog is in surgery as I write. It's pretty major. They think she has a tumour but they cannot see properly so they're going in anyway. She's been in for two hours already.
I don't want to think about it at all.
I am clinging to a whisper of a hope.
On Wednesday night I was convinced she was dying. I said if she lasted the night I had hope.
I said if she got to the vets there was hope.
She was so weak. They said she had hardly any red blood cells, that she was severely dehydrated. They said they'd try. If she responded to the steroids there was hope.
If they could get the drip to work there was hope.
Last night there was hope.
This morning they operated and while I know nothing all I can do is hope.
In the meantime my kitchen is gleaming and I now know all the words to Keane's Silenced by the Night

Grief

Tattie Whippet - My dog

It overwhelms you and you cannot do anything. This huge physical wave of emotion, choking you up so you feel like you are drowning.
You have to gasp for breath, not realising you haven't been breathing.
A sob escapes you and you'd not realised you were holding it in; and then the tears fall and you brush them away angry that you should feel anything at all when you long for it to stop.
To go away.
So hollow.
And I am so angry because, I shouldn't be feeling this way,.
I shouldn't be allowing myself to be subsumed in it all.
It's a dog for God's sake! It's not my Nan or my Granny. Not my mum or dad, my husband or my children.
But I feel like I will explode with it all if I don't cry and then I don't want to cry, I don't want to give in to this monster called grief.
Because that is what it is; an overwhelming sadness that starts right where my heart should be and it paralyses my thoughts, my body, my everything.
And all I feel is an emptiness
A loss that really shouldn't be there.
I hugged her all last night, curled around her keeping her safe. I knew she was dying - that hit my like a brick suddenly, as I was undressing. My beautiful dog was dying right before my eyes. There was nothing I could do, not then at 11 o'clock at night.
She was so weak, she could barely stand but when I asked her to she just did when she'd have much preferred not to; but they do that, dogs, don't they? They'd do anything you ask, because you asked.
I slept last night expecting to wake to the fact that she'd be gone. That she'd be cold in my arms. But she's made of sterner stuff.
She's still alive - just.
And now I long for her to die because that is the way of things, the proper way nature deals with things like this. But I can't do that. In my grief I am selfish. I want her to live. I don't want her to go now. I need her. She's my dog. So she's at the vet's. They're trying to save her and I am crying because I have to face the inevitable and I don't want to.
I have spoken with the vet. I've said stabilise her, do the scans, find out why this is happening, why it is happening so fast, why I have had no warning.
Though I know what they'll find. They've already told me their suspicions.
A tumour.
I don't want to hear it.
I don't.
Decisions then.
Waiting.
Grief.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

I can't do this but I have to.
She's my dog.
My responsibility.
I'll hear what they say and I'll make a decision.
Whatever happens I want her home.
And then, then I'll be able to breathe...

I had a holiday in Africa....

City Men:Country Wives - Welcome Home!

He’s home.

I Love it

But….

I am a little bit tiddly after three glasses of fizz to celebrate the fact I have made it through yet another week without him.

I’d love to go for a fourth but I would lie comatose on the floor; not a spectacle I wish my husband, let alone my boys, to see.

This is the perennial problem.

I get stressed out about the fact that I am in effect a single mother during the week and then a second class citizen at the weekends.

It is a dichotomy I cannot resolve.

One minute my word is law and the next I might as well not exist.

It is a dilemma I feel ineffectual to resolve..especially after three glasses of champagne.

Here again I could be using the champagne as a shield to hide the fact that I really wish to be in charge of this ship. But is that diplomatic?

If I take charge I am relegating my husband and all his achievements to something akin to a mere funding pool which any second rate bank employee could sell.

If I let him be the BIG I AM then I feel as if I have been usurped.

Silly really.

I know I am top dog

I suppose I just wish every now and then that he acknowledges it too….

Meantime I will opt for that fourth glassed and the sweet oblivion and freedom from responsibility it gives me at the end of the week

After all he has been driving so he has a long way to catch up….

Humility and humiliation...I just love boys!

So we've opted for 50 Shades of Grey in Book Club and I thought I was going to have to order it via the Library and risk being spotted up to no good by the eternal busybodies that make up country life when a friend up and volunteered her copy.
"For God's sake take it, " she said. "I've got to get it out of the house before my husband sees what it really is all about. He says he's never seen me so engrossed and I just couldn't cope if he knew. It was bad enough when he caught me reading Twilight!"
I know that feeling. There are some things you just don't want your other half knowing about you. Sod stretch marks and VPL and the fact that you only shave to your knees if they knew what you read...well that's getting just too personal. I don't care that I have been married to him for nigh on 13 years I don't like any censure when I read. I don't like people....
Knowing.
When I lived in London I couldn't read on the Tube not because most of the time I found myself squashed up against a stranger's nether regions or else stuffed under their arm pit, it was because I didn't want them to know too much about me or to judge me in any way.
So when I was offered the loan of the book I grabbed at the chance. I knew the book would be delivered to me discreetly and no one would be any the wiser.
BUT
I hadn't reckoned on my youngest or his newly found reading skills...
My lovely friend had popped the infamous book in Bog Boy's book bag for me to collect at the end of the day. I was waving to him merrily as he came out of class when I noticed him delve into the bag.
Everything went into slow motion.
I knew what he was about to do right there in the middle of the school yard where everyone could see.
"Mum," he yelled, his pure young voice ringing out securing everyone's attention as can only happen when you desperately want to hide. "What's this in my book bag?"
He took the tome out and started to wave it about for all to see.
I struggled to get to him through the hordes of children impeding my way.
"Just a book Darling for Mummy pop it back in your book bag..."
"It's called 50 Shades of Grey," he hollered, "What's it about...?"
Ah yes indeed...I cast a furtive and slightly panicky look round. It's funny how you can see immediately those in the know and can read exactly what they think from their faces.
There were a few too many knowing smirks as I hastily grabbed the book, face aflame and stuffed it into my hand bag.
Bang goes any pretence at subtlety and bang goes my previously spotless reputation...so looking forward to tomorrow morning's drop off!

 

Don't judge a book by it's cover....

Sometimes it seems that it is just Sex Sex Sex I can’t seem to get away from it.

Not even at Book Club that solid staple of the really not wanting to be middle aged Middle England housewives.

But it has wormed its way in there in the form of “50 Shadesof Grey”. Now I have not read the book but already it has that giddy teenage reputation among the ladies of the Suffolk branch of the Dead Tree Society that was once held  so dear by the likes of Shirley Conran and Judith Kranz with Lace and Princess Daisy during the early 1980s.

I blame it on Kindle.

Who knows but ourselves what we are reading and oh how demure we can look with the ubiquitous little machine held primly up to our noses.

Now no one can peer imperiously over their glasses an raise an eyebrow at our choice of reading matter for there are no covers to give away our secrets though possibly an enigmatic smile will say more powerfully what has captured our imaginations in far more detail than a mere title emblazoned on the spine of a book.

There is an elevated feeling of liberation knowing that no one knows what you are reading and that they can only guess and never judge unless you give them leave by divulging your secrets.

It makes me feel quite giddy but then I come back down to earth with a bump – I don’t actually have a Kindle and will have to hope that the cover of this well hyped book is very discreet or I’ll just have to do what I did as a teenager – and get a bigger book to hide it!

It's just a little crush...

Ian Somerhalder as Damon Salvatore

Maybe it's my age or maybe it's the two glasses of white wine I've had but I think I have a problem.
The highlight of my Tuesday evenings now revolves around The Vampire Diaries and a particular character called Damon.
I am far too old to have this sort of reaction; especially to something that is far...well too young for me.
I am a married woman with two young sons ( Please note the young popped in here I am trying not to seem too old when in fact even the doctors in hospital referred to me as geriatric) and the dreadful thing is I am probably old enough to be Ian Somerhalder's Mum too.
It is not a fact that is edifying to contemplate.
Actually I feel somewhat ashamed.
It never used to be like this.
I mean when I was younger all the crushes I had were way older than me.
Honest.
(Apart from that eat really embarrassing time at the Summer Disco in 1982 when I tried to get off with a boy who turned out to be two years younger - my 15 to his 13 - but in my defence I have to say that  he was way taller than me...)
So why now do I find that the crushes I have are getting younger by the day?!
And why on EARTH do they haunt my dreams so?
It is most discombobulating.
It's not something I am likely to confess to my husband either so it probably is for the best that during the working week he works in London and I can watch the Vampire Diaries in guiltless pleasure. But if I let things get out of hand I am certain to make a fool of myself.
Not that I would stalk a crush.
Just that I might, you know, actually say his name at an inappropriate time in my husband's hearing.
Now THAT would be embarrassing...
I know there's nothing wrong with having an active imagination but as my husband and I are not actually together during the week how on earth would I explain me shouting out another man's name in my sleep? Even if that other man has:
A) Never met me
B) Lives in another country
C) Isn't actually real anyway
Should I just lie and pretend  that I do know this character or should confess my crush?
I mean how silly is it to have a crush when you are over 40?
Just had a thought do you think I will have crushes like this when I am 80????!!!
OH GOD!
I think I should die now. That really will be bad. That is sooo bad. It's like knowing your parents still have sex when you are a teenager.
Gross.
Perhaps I  may be lucky; perhaps it is something you grow out of.
Maybe it's to do with all the hormones flying around my body in a last desperate fling at youth in the face of the reality that I am way closer to 50 than I will ever be to 35 again.
Perhaps once I am over the menopause things as paltry as crushes and urges to grapple the nearest man to the ground will just be fleeting and somewhat unimportant memories as I struggle with securing one down on the Times Cryptic Crossword.
You never know I may find a hidden yearning to knit, crochet and do needle point and the crushes of my middle years will be but as ghosts...
God I hope so...